With a few exceptions, research is a team activity, not a loner’s game. While this makes for great news copy, it isn’t how most research works. These sound like research stories to me: the lone genius creating the future breakthrough moments sharing knowledge to create new possibilities. Stories about Minecraft often feature heroes labouring alone to create amazing objects (like a 1:1 scale Star Destroyer from Star Wars They often describe brilliant hacks that allow people to extend the game in clever ways. Because the building blocks are programmable, you can build things that can do things. You can share the things that you create and others can build them too. For those that aren’t familiar with Minecraft, it is an incredibly popular game where you can create things with building blocks. Minecraft is my metaphor for how the research process is usually presented. In that spirit, I’d like to take a moment to look at three different types of computer games as metaphors for the research process. Despite my attempt to dress it up in fancy words, there isn’t anything very special going on here – I just think it will be fun. If you want to learn more about what you do, look at it from a paradigm outside your own. When I have a chance, though, I like to look at research through different lenses and from different perspectives. Mostly I’m thinking about the funding application that is sitting right in front of me at that moment. Given my role, I think about research a lot. It is worth thinking about how the research cycle works, and it doesn’t help to disparage it too much. And that, in general, our funding models serve us well. I believe that, while there are historical biases in most systems of funding, they do a very good job of channelling funds to the best researchers available. I subscribe to the view that research funding agencies work hard to make sure that they are as fair as they can be. Not surprisingly, I don’t subscribe to those views. Often they spend a fair amount of energy trying to work out how to game the system. They go on to talk about how you need to be ‘in the know’, about how people on funding bodies give money to their ‘mates’. When people say this, they are usually complaining about being excluded. People often say that research, and particularly research funding, is a bit of a game. World of Warcraft screencap by Natalie Ford ( )
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